Trump's administration has delivered nearly $1 billion in Camp Lejeune toxic water settlements to Marines and families, a sharp acceleration after years of delay.
President Donald Trump told a North Carolina rally on Tuesday night that his administration has delivered $1 billion in cash settlements to veterans and families exposed to contaminated drinking water at Marine Corps Camp Lejeune, and ordered the Justice Department to settle remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible.
Fox News Digital reported the Department of Justice figure behind that announcement: claimants have received more than $919.7 million since Trump began his second term in January 2025, covering about 3,300 people under the 2022 law that finally opened a path to relief.
That pace stands in hard contrast to the prior stretch. From 2022 through the start of 2025, only 459 settlements were paid, totaling $59.6 million. In March, the administration made the cases a priority and sped the payouts.
At the rally, Trump framed the money as going where it belongs.
"Tonight I’m pleased to announce my administration has delivered $1 billion in cash settlements to these veterans and their families, in addition to 3.1 billion for the VA and ordering the DOJ to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible,"
He added a clear line on who should not collect first.
"We don’t want to give any to the trial lawyers, we want it all to go to the families."
The exposure ran for decades. Between 1953 and 1987, three of eight water systems at Camp Lejeune, outside Jacksonville, N.C., carried contaminated water. Veterans, their families, and civilian employees who lived or worked on the base drank it. Many later developed cancer and other serious illnesses. South Carolina attorney Ed Bell, who took his first Camp Lejeune case in 2007 and helped push the law through, has said the contamination was found to cause four incurable diseases and that babies died.
Congress answered years of pressure with the 2022 Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, which includes the Camp Lejeune Justice Act. Under that law, people who developed cancer or other illnesses from the base drinking water became entitled to relief.
In 2023, the Justice Department and the Department of the Navy launched the Elective Option settlement program as an alternative to drawn-out litigation. It offers quicker payouts for qualifying illnesses. Settlement amounts under the program run from $100,000 to $550,000, tied to the level of harm, stage one cancer versus stage four, for example.
Breitbart reported Trump’s same Tuesday night pledge at an airport rally in Greenville and the same DOJ comparison: more than $919.7 million and roughly 3,300 people paid since January 2025, against the earlier trickle of 459 settlements and $59.6 million.
Bell has worked closely with Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward on the settlements. He told reporters the people he represents have waited long enough.
"A lot of these people have been waiting a long time, and quite frankly, I think a lot of them are relieved,"
Bell said many clients read the payments as the government finally owning the harm.
"A lot of them feel like the government has finally said, 'we're sorry,' by helping with the settlements, so I think it's very positive."
He has been blunt about the current Justice Department effort.
"I have to say, I'm very bullish on what the Department of Justice has been doing,"
Bell described Woodward as “working his tail off” and called him excellent, while noting the work itself is grinding. Any resolution, he said, involves hundreds of details and is a laborious process. He still expects resolution and called the system fair. He estimates about 300,000 claims will eventually be paid.
Just the News reported that the Justice Department, at the direction of the president and the attorney general, has reprioritized approving settlements for Camp Lejeune victims and families who waited years. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward stated the department moved those weekly approvals because many victims had already waited too long for justice.
That same reporting described earlier 2025 settlement totals in the hundreds of millions and tied Trump’s further push on remaining claims to continued Republican control of Congress, a political condition the president has attached to finishing the job at full speed.
The pattern fits a broader second-term focus on service members and veterans, including steps such as when Trump signed the Medal of Honor monument act to clear a National Mall tribute near the Lincoln Memorial.
Camp Lejeune is not an abstract policy file. It is a Marine base where families raised children, civilians punched clocks, and service members returned from deployments only to drink poisoned water for years. The illnesses followed. The legal fight dragged. The 2022 statute created the claim. The early years under that statute still produced few checks.
National defense coverage this cycle has stayed close to the force itself, from Hegseth’s 9/11 warning at the Pentagon to routine protective operations around presidential travel.
Since January 2025, the settlement machine has moved. More than $919.7 million has gone out. About 3,300 people have been paid. Trump has ordered the rest of the legitimate claims settled without delay and has said the money should reach families, not trial lawyers. Bell, who has fought the cases for roughly half of his 44-year career, says the people he represents feel relief and finally hear an official apology in the form of a check.
Security and readiness stories continue to surface around the president’s schedule, including when F-16s intercepted a plane over Cincinnati during a nearby Trump rally, a reminder that the military mission runs in parallel with the veterans’ backlog the White House is now forcing down.
Open questions remain inside the verified record. The precise calendar date of the Tuesday night North Carolina rally was not fixed in the reporting. The gap between the DOJ’s “more than $919.7 million” and Trump’s “$1 billion” framing was not broken out dollar for dollar. Bell’s four incurable diseases were not named in the coverage. Total claims filed versus still pending were not tallied. Settlement criteria beyond the $100,000-to-$550,000 range were not published in full in the accounts used here.
What is fixed is the before-and-after. Hundreds of settlements and tens of millions before January 2025. Thousands of people and more than $919 million after. A president who made the backlog a priority, put the Associate Attorney General on it, and told a North Carolina crowd the remaining legitimate claims should be closed out.
White House continuity has been part of that second-term posture as well, including when Trump shut down talk of ousting Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, keeping the senior team in place while agencies execute orders like the Camp Lejeune push.
Marines, spouses, children, and civilian workers carried the cost of contaminated water for a generation. The statute gave them a claim. This administration is finally writing the checks.
When the government poisons its own and then stalls the remedy, accelerating honest settlements is not charity, it is the bare minimum of keeping faith with the people who wore the uniform.
Rep. Ilhan Omar told MS NOW she did not marry her brother, “not to my knowledge”, days after Homeland Security agents searched her Washington home in an immigration fraud probe.
The Minnesota Democrat sat down with host Chris Hayes for her first major interview after the October 12 search of her Washington, D.C. residence. Hayes pressed her on long-running accusations that her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was actually her brother. Omar’s answer was not a flat denial of any kinship. It was a hedge.
Hayes asked whether she was related to Elmi at all and whether there was “a weird kernel of truth.” Omar replied:
"Not to my knowledge."
The exchange came as federal investigators examine possible false statements on immigration documents tied to her birth date and paperwork completed when she was a child. Daily Mail reporting on the interview laid out her account of both the marriage claim and the pre-dawn search.
Omar married Elmi in 2009 and divorced him in 2017. She has called the brother allegation a disgusting lie. In the interview she traced it to a Somali blog, then to conservative activists in Minneapolis who, she said, found people claiming she had introduced Elmi as her brother. She said she does not know those people and called the claim insane.
Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant at Omar’s D.C. home around 6 a.m. on October 12. Omar said she had slept only two and a half hours when they pounded on the doors. She thought something was on fire or that something was happening to the neighbors.
Fox News reported that the Department of Justice confirmed the action as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation, with HSI leading the work. Omar denounced the raid as an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. Her office called it an outrageous abuse of power. An HSI spokesperson said the enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.
Omar described roughly 15 to 25 agents spending four to five hours inside. They removed 17 items, including phones, computers, notebooks, a vintage camera, and a Somali language book. She said the agents were intrusive but polite, and that they had to do something so they could say they had raided her house.
The search sits inside a wider probe. The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office is examining whether false statements were made in immigration documents concerning Omar’s birth date. Investigators have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including some involving her relatives. No charges or arrests are stated in the available accounts.
The New York Post reported that text messages from the seized phone of Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, helped secure a federal judge’s approval for the raid. Agents seized Omar’s phone, passport, notebooks, and personal computers. Investigators also collected DNA from her trash beforehand. Evidence is expected to go before a federal grand jury in Minnesota on whether Omar and family members lied upon immigrating in 1995.
Former FBI special agent Tracy Walder told that outlet that obtaining discarded DNA is a very easy get if it was left in a trash can. Subpoenas to family members underscore how far the inquiry has already reached. Readers following the case have also seen coverage of agents seizing Omar’s cellphone during the same operation.
Just the News reported that the search relates to a criminal fraud investigation into immigration paperwork filled out by Omar’s late father, Nur Omar Mohamed. Sources link the warrant to forms completed when she was a child. Omar maintains she legally obtained American citizenship at 17 through her father, who became a naturalized citizen in 2000. She said it is convenient for investigators that her father is no longer alive, so the matter can drag on forever.
That background matters because the public fight is not only about an old marriage rumor. It is about whether statements on immigration filings hold up under sworn scrutiny. Separate reporting has described compelling evidence that led agents to search the congresswoman’s home.
President Donald Trump amplified the accusations and, on the Tuesday after the search, said she could go to jail. He also noted talk of deportation. Those comments track with Republican arguments that proven citizenship fraud should carry real consequences, including prison time. Coverage of his remarks spelled out that Omar could face jail, not just deportation, if fraud is established.
Omar rejected suggestions of secret wealth. She told Hayes she lives a basic, working-class life, paycheck to paycheck, with four kids. She said she drives a 2016 Toyota Camry as the family’s only car and rents both her D.C. place and her Minneapolis place. Congressional disclosure documents had appeared to value business interests connected to her husband, political consultant Tim Mynett, at roughly $30 million; that figure was later revised substantially downward, and Hayes said liabilities reduced the reported valuation to around $20,000.
After her address became public, Omar said she cannot continue to live at the D.C. residence. She framed the pressure as the outcome her critics want. Family fallout after the raid has already drawn notice, including when Omar’s daughters arrived at the D.C. home as questions grew over the probe’s next steps.
House Republicans have gone further still. The House majority whip has said prison and deportation should follow if citizenship fraud is proven, a line captured in earlier reporting on calls for prison and deportation if fraud is shown. The legal process, not cable sound bites, will decide whether any of that materializes.
Omar’s interview gave her a chance to close the brother-marriage file with a clean sentence. She did not. “Not to my knowledge” leaves the door cracked while she insists the story began on a blog and was inflated by activists she does not know. At the same time, federal agents with a judge’s warrant removed phones and documents, issued family subpoenas, and steered evidence toward a Minnesota grand jury on immigration filings that predate her time in Congress.
Voters can watch both tracks at once: the political charge that the raid is theater, and the investigative record of warrants, seizures, DNA collection, and grand jury process. Soft answers and hard paper rarely settle the same way.
Accountability starts with clear answers under oath, not careful phrasing on television.
Julio Herrera Velutini got a Trump pardon after his family hired Alina Habba for a $50 million job, per a report the former attorney calls false.
The New York Times detailed the sequence on Tuesday: the Venezuelan banker’s relatives set up Concord Partners, installed Habba as general counsel on a proposed multi-year deal, and the unconditional clemency followed later the same month she started. The Independent carried the account of the hiring, the pay figures, and the timing.
Herrera Velutini had been indicted in 2022 on charges tied to an alleged scheme to bribe Puerto Rico’s governor. Three years later he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance violation under a plea deal. His family, described as anxious to wipe the record clean, moved quickly once Habba became available.
Concord Partners was established by Herrera’s wife in 2025 and has no public presence. The proposed package ran $10 million a year for four years plus bonuses, a $50 million total. Sources familiar with the contract told the Times the hire was meant to help secure the pardon.
The agreement was inked while Habba served as U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey. Judges later ruled that appointment unlawful. She resigned in December 2025, began work at Concord Partners in January, and the pardon came later that month. She remained a special government employee, a status that permits limited outside work under restrictions.
Habba, 42, rejected any connection. She told the Times:
"Any insinuation that my employment, all of which has been vetted and disclosed to the D.O.J., had anything to do with securing a pardon is false,"
An unnamed White House official separately said Habba was not linked to the pardon process.
President Trump has used the clemency power in a range of cases, including a Navy sailor convicted over inert collectible firearms. The Herrera matter fits the broader pattern of high-profile grants that draw immediate scrutiny.
Breitbart noted that Herrera Velutini is the father of Isabela Herrera, who gave $2.5 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC in 2024 and another $1 million later. The same reporting placed the banker among a recent flurry that also covered former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez in a related campaign-finance matter and other defendants once pursued by federal prosecutors.
Last year the Wall Street Journal described a cottage industry of clemency lobbying in which the going rate to advocate for a pardon sat around $1 million. The Herrera family’s proposed package sat far above that figure.
Separate reporting has kept Habba in the headlines. Axios said Monday she is tied to an alleged pay-for-influence matter now under White House review. In a distinct dispute she accused Richard Grenell, former Kennedy Center leader, of misleading her husband, Turkish billionaire Turhan Mildon, on a multimillion-dollar donation that the performing-arts center never received. Grenell called the claim “absurd.” Trump has asked White House Counsel Will Scharf to look into it.
Those side controversies arrive while other legal fights continue, among them the president’s warning that Rep. Ilhan Omar could face jail in an immigration-fraud probe.
A September Gallup poll found a record 89 percent of Americans believe corruption is widespread throughout the U.S. government. That backdrop fuels every fresh clemency story.
Asked last week whether anything inside the White House gave him pause, Vice President JD Vance answered directly:
"D.C. is a corrupt town," "I have not seen a single shred of evidence that [Trump] participates or sanctions in that corruption."
The statement lands against the permanent incentive structure of the capital, where access and timing are always for sale and every presidential decision is instantly litigated in the press.
Similar political crossfire has appeared after other grants of mercy, including the episode in which Trump branded Rep. Henry Cuellar a loser for remaining a Democrat. Clemency remains an exclusive Article II power; the paperwork is public and the arguments never end.
Habba’s defenders stress that her Concord role was disclosed to the Justice Department and that the White House kept her outside the pardon channel. Critics point to the compressed calendar, from resignation, to first day on the new job, to the signature on the clemency warrant, and invite readers to infer a bargain. No charging document or ethics finding has converted that inference into a formal case.
The same capital that lectures on norms still runs on relationships, retainers, and well-timed asks. Senate Democrats already float future probes should they regain the House, guaranteeing the cycle continues regardless of the facts on any single warrant.
Voters can weigh the denials, the public pardon record, and the absence of hard proof of a quid pro quo. Influence will always seek a door in Washington; the question is whether the door that mattered here ever opened.
Tyler Cameron and fiancée Tate Madden told America they are expecting their first child, a baby girl, during a live Dedication Night routine on Dancing with the Stars.
"The Bachelorette" alum shared the pregnancy news Tuesday while competing on season 35, turning a tribute dance into a family milestone that spilled across the ballroom in pink confetti.
Good Morning America reported that Cameron performed a contemporary routine with pro partner Sharna Burgess dedicated to mothers, including his late mother Andrea, before Madden joined him at the end of the number to reveal she is pregnant with their first child.
Host Alfonso Ribeiro then moved the moment from surprise to celebration.
Ribeiro told the room:
"Let's have a gender reveal,"
Pink confetti burst across the ballroom, confirming the couple is expecting a baby girl.
Cameron and Madden had only recently gone public as a permanent pair. They announced their engagement in August and posted the news together on Instagram on Aug. 15, with photos of Cameron proposing on a beach at Little Palm Island in Florida.
The pregnancy announcement arrived just two months after that engagement news, a short runway from ring to nursery plans that many young couples never get to celebrate on national television.
Stable homes and clear parental commitments still matter, whether the setting is a network ballroom or a bitter courtroom fight like the one in a Texas custody dispute that ended in charges after a father figure fled with a toddler.
Cameron first rose to fame on Hannah Brown’s season of "The Bachelorette" in 2019. His mother Andrea died in 2020 after a brain aneurysm. Dedication Night gave him a public way to honor her while standing beside the woman now carrying their daughter.
That mix of grief and new life is ordinary family reality. Parents fight for their kids in quieter arenas every week, including cases where a mother’s emergency plea over her son’s school placement reaches the highest court and still falls short.
Cameron’s show night was the opposite scene: open joy, a named baby girl on the way, and no legal fog around who the parents are.
"Dancing with the Stars" airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and Disney+. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu. The Walt Disney Co. is the parent company of ABC News, Disney+, and Hulu.
For a franchise built on temporary TV romances, Cameron’s arc has moved into the lasting category, engagement, pregnancy, and a public promise of fatherhood in under a year of headlines.
When a man and woman claim their child without apology on live television, they remind the culture that family is still the point, not the subplot.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has signed just one bill in 10 months while nearly 100 others sat unsigned on his desk, and City Hall sources say his team is too busy chasing social media content to do the basic work of governing.
The Post reported that every other City Council-passed bill under Mamdani’s watch has become law the passive way: “returned unsigned.” If the mayor neither signs nor vetoes a bill, it automatically takes effect after four weeks.
That is not how recent mayors handled the same stretch of a term. Eric Adams had signed 30 laws by this point. Bill de Blasio had signed 47. Mike Bloomberg had signed 28. Mamdani has signed one.
The lone signature came in August, on a law allowing year-round outdoor dining on city sidewalks. Everything else has been left to expire into law without his name on it.
City Hall sources describe a mayor’s office that treats governing as optional and content as the main event. One person who often works with City Hall put it bluntly.
“The mayor and his team are obsessed with becoming a content farm, often delaying or can-kicking boring governmental meetings so the mayor and his staff can hold pitch sessions for social media videos.”
The same source added that Mamdani “gets pitched comedy sketches more than Lorne Michaels,” and that “there are lots of laughs, and there is very little work.”
A former City Hall staffer offered a shorter verdict: “It’s easier to govern by TikTok than to actually perform the duties of the job.”
Mamdani, who turned 35 on a recent Sunday, appears in numerous TikTok videos a day. Two sketches on a Monday. Two on a Saturday. Two on a Thursday. The volume is constant. The bill-signing calendar is not.
Another City Hall insider called the pattern lazy on two fronts, refusing to take a stand, and failing to run the basic machinery of briefings, hearings, and signature ceremonies.
“It’s lazy in two ways, one is you are not taking a stand, easier to do nothing than figure out where you stand on something. And lazy from a practical perspective, you can’t focus City Hall staff to hold the hearings, draft the briefings and execute the bill signings.”
Mayors often use the “returned unsigned” route to protest a bill they dislike or to dodge a fight they know they will lose. Mamdani has used it on measures that match his own priorities.
A bill requiring sanctuary rules that bar ICE to be posted at schools and city-owned buildings was introduced in February. It was tied to socialist ally Council member Alexa Aviles. The Council passed it overwhelmingly. When the June window came for a signature, Mamdani left it alone. Four weeks later it took effect without him.
In July, more bills sat waiting: wellness checks on elderly New Yorkers when temperatures rise above 95 degrees, an expansion of free childcare programs from a key Mamdani initiative, and a rent-assistance program. None received a signature.
Those gaps land alongside other delivery problems already on the record, including shortfalls on childcare and affordable housing pledges flagged in his first management report.
Former City Council member Diana Ayala said the unsigned pile sends a strange signal, especially when the mayor is not actually opposing the bills.
“It is a little bit weird. It gives the impression that enough attention is being paid or they disagree, but they don’t. I haven’t seen anything he’s disagreed.”
Ayala added that many of the measures are his own side’s projects: “Those are his initiatives.” She said a signature “would be nice to elevate their initiatives” and “shows goodwill and that they are in alignment on specific issues.”
A former Bloomberg staffer offered a simpler theory for why the pen stays holstered: “They haven’t found a way to make this into compelling social media content.”
While those bills waited in July, Mamdani found time for a different kind of message. He called Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal” and said he had looked into every avenue for New York City police to arrest him.
That is the priority stack on display: international rhetoric and daily sketches first, routine mayoral paperwork last. City Hall did not respond to a request for comment on the signing record.
The same administration has poured energy into high-profile progressive fights, from joining sanctuary cities to block a Trump public charge rule to defending expansive local experiments that draw heavy pushback.
Voters also keep hearing about big-ticket city ventures such as a $70 million city-run grocery plan that has already attracted lawsuits and expert warnings. Signing Council bills is quieter work. It does not trend. It still has to get done.
Automatic enactment means the laws still take effect. What disappears is accountability. A signature says the mayor owns the policy. Silence says the office would rather not be tied to the boring parts of the job.
Rent policy, housing, and business rules still move through the same City Hall whether or not the mayor wants the photo. Even a procedural win on a landlord rent-freeze lawsuit does not replace the basic duty to process the Council’s work in public and on time.
Critics of Mamdani’s wider program have warned that ideology without execution is a dead end. Investor Bill Ackman has said Mamdani’s socialist agenda risks disaster for New York City. A desk full of unsigned bills does not reassure anyone waiting on competent administration.
Ten months in, the comparison is no longer abstract. Adams, de Blasio, and Bloomberg each put dozens of signatures on the record by this stage. Mamdani has one outdoor-dining signing and a content calendar packed with sketches.
New Yorkers can live with a mayor who likes a camera. They cannot afford a City Hall that treats the actual job as the thing that gets in the way.
Ilhan Omar’s daughters have shown up at her Washington home after a Homeland Security raid, while the Minnesota Democrat stays out of public view and rumors about her location intensify.
Fox News Digital cameras caught Rep. Ilhan Omar’s eldest daughter pulling a black sedan into the driveway of the congresswoman’s Washington, D.C., home on Saturday night, days after federal agents searched the residence in a pre-dawn operation.
Fox News Digital reported that Isra Hirsi, 23, carried a bag with both hands and walked through the front door. U.S. Capitol Police appeared on the same street that night. Two days later, a young teenage girl believed to be Omar’s second daughter entered the home with a woman who appeared to be a caretaker.
Omar herself has not been seen in public since Homeland Security Investigations agents hit the house around 6:00 a.m. last Monday. Her phone and passport were reportedly taken in the search. The absence has fed open talk about where the embattled Democrat is and why family members are now cycling back to the property.
Investigators are examining whether the congresswoman, her father, or both falsified information on citizenship paperwork, according to sources who described an immigration fraud probe. That is the core of the case now drawing relatives, subpoenas, and public pushback from Omar’s circle.
Isra Hirsi did not linger for questions. When approached, she shot back a short line at reporters.
Isra Hirsi told Fox News Digital:
"What's your problem?"
The 23-year-old Barnard College graduate has a public record of activism. She co-founded U.S. Climate Strike in 2019 and was arrested at Columbia University in 2024, then suspended, after joining an anti-Israel tent encampment that lasted two weeks until police cleared it. Her arrival at the raided D.C. house put a known political figure back on the doorstep of an active federal search scene.
Capitol Police do not normally patrol random city blocks. Their beat is the Capitol complex, with authority that also covers protection of members of Congress and their families. Their presence on Omar’s street the same night Isra Hirsi walked inside underscored how closely the property was being watched after the raid.
Tim Mynett, the political consultant Omar married in 2020, has been the most visible adult on site. He came and went through the week mainly to walk the couple’s dog, Teddy, and he brushed off the probe when reporters pressed him.
Mynett said he has "no concerns" about the investigation. He also complained about the press presence outside the home.
Tim Mynett told Fox News Digital:
"You guys are annoying the h*** out of the neighbors around here, man,"
He snapped when asked about rumors that Omar had left the country. Omar’s son had not been seen arriving at the house as of the latest reporting. The pattern was clear enough: children and a spouse moving in and out, the congresswoman nowhere in sight.
Sources confirmed to Fox News Digital that Homeland Security Investigations executed a search warrant linked to the immigration fraud investigation. Agents focused on whether Omar and her father gave false information when her citizenship papers were completed. Phone and passport seizures fit a document-and-communications grab, not a casual visit.
Readers tracking the case already saw reporting on how federal agents seized Omar’s cellphone during the same immigration fraud raid, a detail that matches the pressure now visible around the D.C. home.
The New York Times reported that about a dozen people, including Omar relatives, have been subpoenaed. Sahra Noor, Omar’s sister, skipped a scheduled Minnesota book-tour stop last week after the bookstore cited a “family emergency.” Three sources said Noor voluntarily spoke with federal investigators the same week.
That sequence matters. A search warrant, device seizures, a cluster of subpoenas, and a sister answering questions all point to a live inquiry, not a one-day photo op. Earlier coverage also noted that sources cited compelling evidence of crimes before agents moved on the D.C. residence.
Border Czar Tom Homan said over the weekend that if the allegations are proven, they could lead to Omar’s denaturalization, the legal process of stripping citizenship obtained by fraud. No charges have been announced. No denaturalization case has been completed. The allegation stage is where the facts still sit.
Hours after the raid, Omar’s account posted a statement on X framing the search as revenge.
Omar’s statement said:
"This raid by Trump’s DHS is an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies,"
The same statement continued that Trump had “relentlessly targeted” her for a decade, called the raid “pointless,” insisted she “has done nothing wrong,” and argued no president should use federal power to intimidate political enemies.
Vice President JD Vance gave a different account in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital last Tuesday. He rejected the idea that the probe was a political hit job and drew a contrast with the prior administration.
Vice President JD Vance said:
"We don't want to be like the Biden administration. We never want to be like that, where they would allow the law to go after their political opponents,"
Vance added that officials “really want to let the law, the facts drive this,” and that if justice requires further steps, “we’ll take a step when we have to.”
Separate reporting has followed official confirmation of the wider case, including when Tom Homan confirmed an ICE criminal investigation into Omar over marriage and immigration fraud claims. The Vance interview fits that same line: process the evidence, do not treat the badge as a campaign tool.
Public records and prior reporting recited in the coverage sketch a complicated marital timeline that investigators are now weighing against citizenship filings. Omar was ceremonially married to Ahmed Hirsi in 2002 and later legally married him in 2018. They share three children. From 2009 until 2017 she was legally married to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who has been described in allegation language as “allegedly her brother.” Her youngest daughter was born during that period. She married Mynett in 2020.
Those dates are background, not a courtroom verdict. What the warrant affidavit contains has not been released. Docket numbers and the full list of seized items beyond the phone and passport have not been made public. Still, citizenship fraud cases turn on whether forms told the truth about identity, family relationships, and eligibility. That is why the paperwork question, not cable-news noise, sits at the center of the HSI search.
House Republicans have already spoken in blunt terms about penalties if fraud is proved, including commentary that raised prison and deportation as consequences tied to citizenship fraud findings. Homan’s denaturalization warning points in the same direction: citizenship obtained by lies is not a shield.
Absolute calendar dates for the Monday raid and the weekend arrivals were not pinned down in the initial wave of reporting. The teenage girl’s identity was described as “believed to be” Omar’s second daughter, not formally confirmed on camera. The caretaker was not named. Omar has not answered repeated requests for comment beyond the X statement. Whether she is inside the D.C. home, elsewhere in the country, or outside the United States has not been established by on-the-record sightings.
Related official talk has gone further on the marriage-fraud track, including statements covered when DHS leadership addressed marriage claims and deportation in the same investigation lane. None of that replaces a charging document. It does show why the empty public schedule and the sudden family traffic at the raided house keep drawing attention.
For now the verified picture is limited and concrete. Federal agents searched a sitting congresswoman’s D.C. home over citizenship paperwork. Devices were taken. Relatives drew subpoenas. A sister talked to investigators. Daughters came back to the property. Capitol Police rolled through the street. Omar stayed out of sight and called the whole thing political. The vice president said the facts will decide what comes next.
Taxpayers can live with aggressive enforcement against immigration fraud. What they should not accept is one set of rules for ordinary applicants and a softer one for powerful people who suddenly cannot be found when the warrant hits the door.
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is under fire from the left after a report said she pressed staff to pursue angles on Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s alleged family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Fox News Digital reported that Semafor, citing two anonymous CBS News staffers, said Weiss personally advocated for journalists to chase story lines about El-Sayed’s supposed sympathy toward the Muslim Brotherhood.
The directive landed as the Michigan Democrat already faced questions over old family social media posts. Those posts, first surfaced by the Washington Free Beacon, described his half-sister’s account of long family links to the group. Anonymous staffers framed Weiss’s push as out of bounds. Media watchdog voices say the leak itself reveals something else: a newsroom allergic to any scrutiny that might bruise a Democrat.
NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham told Fox the anonymous griping fits a familiar pattern. Staffers, he argued, bristle at basic fairness when the target sits on the left.
"She’s making them do difficult things,"
Graham said. He added a pointed mockery of the internal reaction:
"Can we look into whether Abdul El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, like his family says they do? How dare you."
And he summed up the culture he sees: "You’re not supposed to do stories that might make Democrats look bad." He also said staff "object [to] the idea that they have to be somehow a little bit fair and balanced."
El-Sayed is running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate from Michigan. He was born in 1984 in Rochester Hills, raised in the state, and has cited his University of Michigan education and local public-health work. The controversy centers not on his own résumé but on posts by his half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, from 2012 and 2013.
One 2012 post read:
"Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect,"
Another from the same year stated: "My family has long been MB, but I've always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively." A 2013 post said: "Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in Egypt. Lie low, stay safe."
Their mother, Fatten Elkomy, attended Egypt’s Alexandria University. A Brookings Institution report has described strong Muslim Brotherhood activity on that campus in the 1970s. El-Sayed has flatly denied any personal or family operational ties in recent television appearances.
Speaking with NBC’s Kristen Welker, he rejected any connection. In a later exchange with NBC anchor Tom Llamas he doubled down, saying he had not discussed his mother’s alleged activism with her and dismissing the line of inquiry as recycled "hearsay evidence from a tweet."
"I have no ties, we have no ties,"
El-Sayed said. He also told Llamas:
"I was born in 1984 down the street in Rochester Hills. I was raised here in Michigan, went to the University of Michigan, rebuilt the health department in this city, led the health department in this county, and you want to ask me about what's happening in Egypt in 1970? Are you serious?"
Llamas pressed him on consistency, noting El-Sayed has attacked the president over truthfulness and asking whether voters should expect the same standard from him. El-Sayed answered that he was not lying. On another outlet he compared the questions to those John F. Kennedy faced as a Catholic candidate in 1960.
CBS News itself largely stayed away from the family-posts story last week even as other outlets covered the denials and the unearthed tweets. That silence is part of what made Weiss’s reported instruction land like a grenade inside the building.
The Semafor account triggered an immediate wave of attacks on Weiss rather than engagement with the underlying family claims. Zeteo founder and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan unloaded on X, calling her "a rightwing, pro-Israel, anti-Muslim troll who has zero qualifications to be running national TV network" and accusing her of trying to turn CBS into the same.
The Nation correspondent Jeet Heer declared, "No self-respecting journalist should work for Bari Weiss." Far-left activist Shaun King wrote that "Nobody should respect or trust ANYTHING coming out of @CBSNews at this point."
The intensity tracks a broader habit: treat any editorial demand for balance as illegitimate when it risks awkward facts for Democrats. Similar partisan reflexes show up when Democrats link a Wyoming stabbing to Trump before a motive is known, or when media institutions close ranks in political fights.
Graham’s critique cuts to the institutional problem. If two staffers run to another outlet because their editor wants angles on a candidate’s family history with a controversial Islamist movement, the objection is not to poor sourcing. The objection is to the assignment itself.
No primary document in the public record quoted here proves Abdul El-Sayed held membership or operational roles in the Muslim Brotherhood. The concrete material is his sister’s decade-old posts describing their mother’s early-1970s college activism and the family’s longer association, plus the Brookings characterization of Alexandria University at that time. El-Sayed calls the whole line non-serious and rooted in a different country and era.
Weiss, according to the Semafor account relayed through the anonymous staffers, wanted CBS journalists to test those claims rather than ignore them. In a newsroom culture that has spent years framing certain topics as radioactive, that instruction reads as heresy to some. To others it reads like basic reporting: when a half-sister posts that the family "has long been MB," a national news organization covering a Senate race can ask follow-ups.
The same media environment that erupts over Weiss has its own selective memory on press power and political pressure. Readers have watched Obama criticize Trump’s White House press moves while earlier administrations took their own shots at outlets. Network solidarity plays out in other fights too, including when major TV networks suspend pool coverage in solidarity disputes.
Michigan voters will decide whether family history from the 1970s and 2012 tweets matter to a 2020s Senate bid. That is a political judgment. The journalistic judgment is narrower: are the posts newsworthy enough to examine, and is an editor allowed to say so out loud?
Anonymous CBS staffers described themselves as aggrieved by Weiss’s advocacy. Their chosen remedy was not an internal edit fight with named accountability. It was a leak that painted the pursuit of the Brotherhood angle as illegitimate on its face. Graham’s translation is blunt: fairness itself has become the offense when Democrats are in the frame.
That stance has consequences beyond one Michigan race. If legacy newsrooms treat certain candidate backgrounds as off-limits, viewers get advocacy with a camera, not scrutiny. El-Sayed’s denials are clear and repeated. His sister’s posts are also clear and public. Both can be reported without turning the news division into a campaign shop for either side.
Democratic strategists already face other headwinds heading into the next cycle, from shifting voter attitudes on process questions to high-profile investigations that keep the party on defense. Democrats are retreating from mail-in voting talk in some polling, and separate federal attention has fallen on threats aimed at election offices and Democratic senators, including the FBI probe of powder letters mailed to those targets. Media credibility is not helped when the loudest newsroom energy is spent policing an editor who wants a hard look at open-source family claims.
Weiss has not publicly detailed her exact instructions in the material at hand. Semafor’s Sunday account, built on two unnamed staffers, is the account driving the uproar. El-Sayed continues to reject the premise. The posts remain online for anyone to read. The left’s response has been less about the evidence trail and more about declaring the editor unfit for asking.
Newsrooms that cannot tolerate an assignment to check a candidate’s family record against the candidate’s own denials are not protecting standards. They are protecting a side. Viewers can tell the difference.
Crime victims and grieving relatives blasted Attorney General Letitia James outside her Manhattan office Tuesday, saying she dropped the ball on New Yorkers as they backed her GOP challenger.
Six New Yorkers hit by violence and drugs stood with Republican candidate Sarita Komatireddy outside James’ Lower Manhattan office and charged that the two-term incumbent has failed to put victims first. The New York Post reported the group said James “dropped the ball on protecting New Yorkers” while Komatireddy unveiled a plan for a Victims Advisory Council inside the attorney general’s office.
Komatireddy, a former federal prosecutor running as an underdog, told the crowd criminals now get more attention from elected officials than the people they harm. The November 3 election is weeks away. A recent Republican internal poll put James at 50.7 percent and Komatireddy at 44.7 percent, a six-point gap.
The former prosecutor vowed that if voters put her in office, victims and families would finally have a direct line to the attorney general. She also said she would re-dedicate half of the office’s 700 prosecutors to criminal cases and send AG prosecutors into local district attorney offices when victims complain that cases are falling through the cracks.
“In New York today, the reality is, criminals have more of an audience with our elected officials than crime victims,” Komatireddy said.
“They’re all angry. They’re all tired of being ignored. Each one of them is a victim of lawlessness.”
“For the first time... those victims will have a direct line to the attorney general,” she added. “We will place victims at the center of what we do, and give them the respect and dignity that they deserve.”
Tatiana Brahimi, a Putnam County mother, stood with the candidate and rejected politics as usual. Her 18-year-old son was struck and killed by a car during a 2016 Dutchess County brawl.
“I’m not a politician. This is why I believe in Saritha. She is not a politician,” Brahimi said. “Letitia James and all those cronies before her do not care about us. I buried a child. How many of us are burying our loved ones? The government doesn’t care. We need people like Saritha, who cares.”
Madeline Brame lost two sons. Army veteran Sgt. Hason Correa was stabbed to death in Harlem in 2018. Her other son, Rayvon Brame, overdosed on fentanyl-laced cocaine. She said victims and their families “need a seat at the table.”
Long Island mom Teresa Bliss described a string of failures after her 25-year-old son David was shot to death in broad daylight in Port Jefferson in 2021 by a career criminal who was on probation. She learned of the killing over the radio after officers told her to wait in the car outside the precinct.
“These cascading failures, from the judicial disposition of probation, in lieu of incarceration, to lax probation enforcement, to the absence of proper, dignified family notification protocols, demonstrate a complete system breakdown.”
“This is exactly why victims and surviving families need a permanent voice,” Bliss said. “Because after the most painful, life altering nightmare of our lives, we are asking for one simple thing: to be heard.”
Jennifer Harrison, a Long Islander who founded Victims Rights NY after her boyfriend was murdered outside a New Jersey nightclub in 2005, tied the pain to state policy choices under Gov. Kathy Hochul and James. New York’s 2019 criminal justice reforms bar judges from setting bail on most crimes.
“In Kathy Hochul and Letitia James in New York, we’ve seen the consequences of criminal justice policies that, in my view, far too often put offenders ahead of the victims,” Harrison said. That same soft-on-crime climate has surfaced in other high-profile fights, including when Hochul handed a Cornell gang-rape case to the embattled attorney general.
“When the criminal justice system fails a victim, where are we supposed to go if not for people like Saritha?” Harrison asked. She pointed to activist judges, prosecutors whose decisions raise public-safety questions, bail reform, a parole board that families believe too often disregards the severity of violent crime, and failures to enforce parole and probation violations.
Jennifer Driver, sister of 21-year-old Long Island woman Sarah Patricia Goode, who was raped and murdered in 2014 after rejecting a man’s sexual advances, backed the call for a permanent voice. “Victims and survivors deserve a permanent voice in the laws, policies, and services that affect their lives,” Driver said. “It would help turn our pain into purpose and ensure victims are treated with dignity, compassion, and the support they deserve.”
“Not an afterthought,” she added. “We cannot change what happened to our loved ones, but we can work to improve the system so that future victims and their families are heard, supported, and treated with the respect that they deserve.”
A spokesperson for Letitia James rejected the criticism and cast the rally as politics. The office has faced separate scrutiny over how it handles major cases, including when Trump lawyers pressed James on missing evidence in the $450 million New York civil case.
“Survivors deserve results, not politics,” the spokesperson said. “Attorney General Letitia James has always fought for them, including suing the federal government to protect more than $212 million in services for survivors of violent crime. While our opponent stages political events, Attorney General James is at work delivering for every New Yorker.”
Komatireddy had blamed James earlier in the week for subway “chaos.” The city has already recorded its seventh transit homicide so far this year, nearly double the four murders over the same span in 2025. Those numbers land against a backdrop of other questions about the attorney general’s priorities, including a whistleblower inside James’ office who alleged staff were told to target Trump and his allies.
Komatireddy has also said she would keep an open line so that if a crime victim is dissatisfied with a local district attorney, “they have someone to call.” She laid out that approach in a Substack interview with The New York Editorial Board. James, meanwhile, continues to draw assignments in sensitive prosecutions, as when she opened a criminal probe into Cornell rape claims after a Hochul order.
The victims who spoke Tuesday did not claim the attorney general caused every tragedy. They said the people who lost family members keep getting pushed to the side while bail rules, probation decisions, and political incentives leave repeat offenders on the street and survivors without a real voice.
New Yorkers burying sons and daughters are done waiting for Albany to notice. Law-and-order voters now have a clear choice between another term of the same priorities and a prosecutor who says victims finally get the seat at the table.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is pairing with the NAACP for swing-state town halls next week, pressing Democrats to the polls while she keeps a 2028 bid in view.
The Hill reported that Harris and the NAACP will host midterm town halls aimed at driving voters in key states to the polls, with stops set for Milwaukee on Oct. 26 and Atlanta on Oct. 29.
The events land days before Election Day in two states that will decide major races. Wisconsin faces an open governor’s seat after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers announced his retirement. Georgia features Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) fighting for a second term against Rep. Mike Collins (R).
Harris’s office also described an October campaign blitz that already included Mississippi and New Hampshire. The town halls put her back at the center of the Democratic midterm effort, even as she continues to hedge on a presidential run.
Speaking with actress Keke Palmer, Harris framed the choice in blunt terms.
“‘28 don’t matter if we don’t do ‘26 right. What’s right in front of us,”
That line matches the public posture she has tried to hold for months. She recently said she was “undecided” on another White House bid. In February she said she “might” run in 2028.
The timing is familiar. Harris has ducked firm 2028 answers while pushing 2026, keeping the next cycle open without fully committing to it.
A Focaldata/Financial Times poll found 30 percent of respondents chose Harris as the next Democratic presidential nominee. That figure still places her in the early mix with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson cast the partnership as ongoing organizing rather than a last-minute get-out-the-vote stunt.
“Our work doesn’t begin or end on Election Day. From voter education to grassroots organizing, we remain committed to building informed, engaged communities,”
Johnson added that the group expects to keep that effort going with Harris in the two headlined cities.
“We look forward to continuing that work alongside Vice President Harris in Milwaukee and Atlanta.”
Milwaukee and Atlanta are not random backdrops. Both sit inside states where Democratic turnout has decided recent cycles, and both now host races that will shape the party’s map for the next two years.
Harris has already been asked to carry more of the midterm load as Biden stays mostly off the trail and other party figures fill the gap. The NAACP events extend that pattern into the final stretch.
Even as Harris tells voters to focus on 2026, the presidential speculation has not quieted. Newsom has said he would not run if Harris decides to. Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times she thinks about a presidential race “personally.”
That early jockeying has already produced public friction elsewhere in the party, including infighting over the open 2028 lane involving Newsom’s orbit and Buttigieg.
Inside Harris’s own circle, the picture is no cleaner. Reporting has detailed how Doug Emhoff has privately preferred she stay out of 2028, a reminder that the “focus on the midterms” line coexists with real doubt about another national campaign.
Democratic senators have likewise sidestepped clear backing for a Harris White House bid, leaving her midterm visibility higher than her declared support for the next presidential cycle.
The Wisconsin stop comes as Democrats prepare for a governor’s race without Evers on the ballot. The Atlanta date arrives while Ossoff tries to hold a Senate seat that Republicans see as reachable with Collins as the challenger.
Harris’s itinerary, Mississippi and New Hampshire already, Milwaukee and Atlanta next, tracks the party’s need for turnout in places where margins are thin and enthusiasm is not guaranteed.
What the schedule does not resolve is the larger contradiction. Harris is the former vice president headlining NAACP town halls to “do ‘26 right,” while poll numbers, rival ambition, and her own hedged comments keep 2028 in the same conversation.
Voters in Wisconsin and Georgia will get the midterm pitch first. The presidential question is only deferred, not closed.
Democrats want turnout now and options later, and Harris is trying to sell both at once.
Bill Clinton made his first Florida campaign stop this cycle for Democrat David Jolly, joining a late push in a race the GOP still leads two weeks from Election Day.
The 42nd president appeared Tuesday night at an interfaith rally with Jolly at the Koinonia Worship Center in Pembroke Park, near Hollywood, Florida. It marked Clinton’s first public campaign appearance of the cycle in the state.
Daily Mail reporting put the stop roughly two weeks before Election Day, with Florida still unwon for Democrats at the governor’s level for three decades.
Clinton, now 80, opened by addressing his age directly.
He told the crowd that “one blessing” of his age “is you can say whatever you want,” adding, “Of course, many people don't care anymore.”
"one blessing" of his age "is you can say whatever you want,"
Some have speculated that age helped explain the late timing. The source also noted Clinton often waits until later stages of races before appearing.
David Jolly is the Democratic nominee for governor and a former Republican. He appeared with Clinton and has narrowed the gap with Republican Byron Donalds, who still holds a single-digit lead in recent polls and a significant fundraising advantage.
Jolly has described his campaign as “defying gravity.” He has courted moderate and undecided voters by stressing moderate credentials and focusing on high prices, rising home insurance costs, and concern over rapid data-center buildout.
In an interview earlier this month with CNN’s Dana Bash, Jolly said his edge ran through “disaffected Republicans,” including “DeSantis voters” and “former MAGA voters who say they just can’t stick with Republicans this cycle.”
"former MAGA voters who say they just can’t stick with Republicans this cycle."
That is the bet: peel soft Republicans in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the governor’s mansion since 1994. Term-limited Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is leaving office. Donalds is the GOP choice to succeed him.
Outside help has arrived from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and former ambassador Rahm Emanuel, both of whom have thrown support behind Jolly. Hillary Clinton is also expected to stump for him before Election Day.
The Clintons’ late midterm stops fit a familiar pattern, old-guard Democrats rolled out in the closing stretch.
Before the Florida rally, Clinton was seen at the Chicago Marathon earlier this month. In September he spoke onstage with Hillary Clinton during the Clinton Global Initiative 2026 Annual Meeting at the New York Hilton Midtown.
Public activity from the former first couple still draws attention, including older controversies and political fights that never fully leave the stage, such as when Trump discussed targeting the Clintons in separate coverage.
Hillary’s expected Florida appearance also lands against her own recent framing of Democratic discouragement, including when Hillary Clinton ranked her 2016 loss alongside major national shocks for downcast partisans.
Separate Clinton-world flashpoints continue to surface online as well, from foundation management fights to Clinton Foundation internship backlash over “discretion” language in a posting.
The core math has not moved much. Florida has not elected a Democratic governor since 1994. Donalds enters the final stretch with a polling edge and more money. Jolly is a party-switcher asking DeSantis and former MAGA voters to break ranks.
Clinton’s Pembroke Park stop puts a former president onstage to close that sale. The event was framed as interfaith outreach. The political product was a Democrat who once sat with Republicans now asking those same voters to abandon the GOP ticket.
Historical scrutiny of Clinton-era decisions still follows him in public life, including renewed attention when declassified 9/11 files cited Clinton-era warnings in other reporting.
None of that changes the immediate race facts on the ground: a single-digit GOP lead, a fundraising gap, a three-decade Democratic drought in Tallahassee, and a late cameo from an 80-year-old ex-president.
Democrats are finishing in Florida with yesterday’s headliner and a nominee chasing Republican defectors. Voters there have rejected that party’s governors for 30 years, and a closing rally does not erase the record.
